Hoover Dam in popular culture
The Hoover Dam has made frequent appearances in various forms of media on account of its size and national prominence within the United States. Prior to the dam's completion in 1936, the Boulder Dam construction project was likewise the subject of a number of films. Depictions in media Film * 1933 The 1933 comedy I Loved You Wednesday follows the life of the fictional Philip Fletcher, an engineer working on the Boulder Dam project. * 1934 The Silver Streak features a team of doctors racing to transport an iron lung to Hoover Dam after a worker is injured during construction. * 1936 The protagonist of the 1936 drama film ''Boulder Dam'' works on the construction of the dam. The protagonist (Rusty) sees his character change as the dam is constructed. * 1964 The protagonists of Viva Las Vegas view the Hoover Dam, along with other Las Vegas landmarks, as part of a montage. * 1978 The dam is collapsed by an earthquake in ''Superman'' after the San Andres Fault Line is triggered by nuclear weapons. * 1985 A comedic fight between the protagonists of Lost in America takes place on top of the dam and in one of the structure's power stations. * 1996 In Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Beavis and Butt-Head accidentally release the water behind the Hoover Dam, which cuts off the power to Las Vegas and causes a blackout. * 1997 In Vegas Vacation (the fourth installment in National Lampoon’s ''Vacation'' film series), Clark Griswold and his family take a tour of the dam. Clark accidentally creates a leak in the dam's inside walkways. Clark then opens the wrong door and ends up outside. He takes a cable and swings himself across the dam and hits the dam wall. He is forced to climb the scaffolding to the very top to get out. * 2006 In the 2006 miniseries 10.5: Apocalypse, the dam collapses when Lake Mead starts to heat up and expand beyond the spillway's capacity. * 2007 In the 2007 ''Transformers'' movie, Hoover Dam is used to house the remains of the Decepticon leader Megatron, with the dam coming under attack by the Decepticons during the film. * 2007 Hoover Dam is one of the stops the protagonist of ''Into the Wild'' makes during his road-trip through America. * 2015 In the 2015 disaster film ''San Andreas'' the dam is collapsed by a massive earthquake. Television * 2008 In the 2008 television special Life After People, The Dam is able to make the Las Vegas area one of the last places with electricity up to a year after people. However, the generators are brought down by the quagga mussel when they place themselves on the inside of a pipe, multiply on top of one another, and eventually completely block the diameter of the pipe, preventing cooling water from moving to a generator, and causing the generators to overheat and shut down, resulting in Las Vegas going dark permanently. The Dam finally collapses after 10,000 years after people due to erosion of its concrete and the cumulative effect of seismic activity. Its becomes one of the last great collapses. * 2008 In the 2008 television documentary film Aftermath: Population Zero, the Hover Dam survives despite most other dams on the Colorado River collapsing sue to excessive water pressure. Once the Glen Canyon Dam collapses, the flood waters race downstream towards the Hoover Dam. The water passes over the dam, forming a roaring cascade of water that thunders downstream, sweeping away other dams and overwhelming everything in the way until it reaches the Gulf of California. Video games * 1998 The Dam was a stage featured in the Vigilante 8 video game for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. An updated version of the same map is also present in the 2008 quasi-remake of the same game, called Vigilante 8 Arcade for the Xbox 360. * 1998 In Half-Life, the first map of the chapter "Surface Tension" takes place in dam similar to the Hoover Dam. * 2004 A parody of the dam appears in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas known as the Sherman Dam. It provides Las Venturas (the game's version of Las Vegas) with hydroelectric power and also regulates the height of the Sherman Reservoir behind it. * 2010 Hoover Dam plays a vital role in the post apocalyptic world of Fallout: New Vegas, where multiple factions attempt to control the dam and its vital electrical output. The final battle of the game takes place across the top of the dam and in its power stations. * 2011 The dam appears as a level in Duke Nukem Forever. The plot of the game sees alien invaders using Hoover Dam's hydroelectric capacity to power a wormhole. Photography * 1941-42 American landscape photographer Ansel Adams produced a series of photographs featuring the dam. Literature *'2015' In the Hot War Series novel Bombs Away by Harry Turtledove, Las Vegas was targeted for atomic bombing by the Soviet Union on March 2, 1951, but local air-defense was able to shoot down the bomber. In all likelihood, it was revealed that the Soviets weren't actually trying to bomb Las Vegas, but rather the Hoover Dam, which was located about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away from the city. Music * 1977 (The) Highwayman by Jimmy Webb does not mention the Hoover Dam by name but it includes a verse about a dam builder who fell into the concrete of a dam near "a place called Boulder on the wild Colorado". The song was famously covered by supergroup The Highwaymen. * 1992 "Standing on the edge / Of the Hoover Dam / I'm on the centerline / Right between two states of mind" - Written by Bob Mould, "Hoover Dam" is a much beloved track on the album Copper Blue with Mould's then band Sugar. References Category:United States in popular culture